Brawn pushing for cash race for teams

Formula One’s new managing director of motorsports Ross Brawn is pushing to introduce a non points race within the Formula One calendar.

Whilst Formula One has an often split fan base, with the traditionalists and the new fans of the sport, it’s also difficult to come up with ideas to improve the spectacle.

One thing which could be looked at is the format of the race weekend.

Currently, with the exception of Monaco, the Formula One weekend exists of two free practice sessions of one and a half hours each on a Friday.

Then Saturday has a third free practice session of an hour, followed by Qualifying and then on Sunday comes the race.

Formula One recently tried to freshen up the qualifying format, which proved to be a mitigating disaster and in turn made the early part of that season a bit of a shambles.

To avoid messing about with rules and format changes during the season, Brawn would like to hold an experimental non points paying race.

‘My dream is a non-championship race once a year so that we could try a different format in that race.

‘A non-championship race would enable us to vary the format and try something different – and evolve it.

‘You can’t take the risk of swapping a format in a championship race and not getting it right.’ Brawn told Sky Sports.

The idea excited former three-time Formula One World Champion Lewis Hamilton who also told Sky Sports: ‘That doesn’t sound like a terrible idea! A new format is definitely needed for Formula 1. Thursday to Sunday has been the same for the last 11 years.’

‘With the way the cars are, which makes it difficult to overtake and people complain you can’t overtake, you need to come up with something unique and different races, Look at Monaco, you can’t overtake there so maybe we should do something different to spice it up – maybe a sprint race. Monaco should be different from the others.’